It is fairly widely argued that, as a people, we should spend more time studying the scriptures. That’s a big part of the motivation behind this blog and it’s sister wiki. We all know of the condemnation spoken of in D&C 84:58 and made famous by President Benson.

Naturally, much of what goes on here on the blog, at the wiki, and in Sunday School classes, is–on a good day:)–to look closely at what the scriptures say and listen to what authorities say about them. That’s wonderful but study alone, without personal revelation, doesn’t amount to much.

Consider Nephi’s reaction to hearing his father’s vision…was it to carefully parse his father’s words, ask questions about them and debate with others the meaning? No. We know that’s much more similar to his elder brother’s reaction. (See 1 Ne 15:1-11.) Nephi’s reaction was to seek revelation (1 Ne 11:1). Which he then received. Read the rest of this entry »

What does it mean to take the name of the Lord in vain? We could look at lots of scriptures. Here’s 3: Ex 20:7, D&C 63:60-65 & D&C 41:1. The first is the famous example–it is one of the ten commandments. The second says that we take the name of the Lord in vain when we speak as though we’re authorized by the Lord when we aren’t. The third curses the members of the Church (because we go by his name) when we don’t listen to Christ. One thing we see from these scriptures is the wide variety of things it means to “take the name of the Lord in vain.”

Which is worse: to hit your hand with a hammer and cry out “God that hurt,” to hit your hand with a hammer and say f— or to close a prayer with the words “in the name of Jesus Christ” without any thought for Jesus? Read the rest of this entry »

The wiki site is down right now and has been for a good share of today. Sorry for the inconvenience. Just want to let people know that I have contacted the person who hosts the site for us and hope that things will be working by Sunday morning. Feel free to post questions here. I’ll post status updates here.

Over the last few years (has it been that long?) a lot of work has been done on our sister wiki for the chapters Lesson 2 covers. The wiki has about about 70 printed pages of content! You can see the entire content here. It was a fun exercise for me to go through that and pull out some of my favorite highlights. I hope you enjoy. Read on. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been a lot of discussion of late about prioritizing one scriptural text over another. So I thought it might be a nice exercise to think through some scriptures we simply ignore. Read the rest of this entry »